Patriots' focus now on undefeated postseason

The 2007 New England Patriots’ 16-0 regular season is, well, history now. A new year – and the NFL’s second season – beckon.

Glen Farley

The 2007 New England Patriots’ 16-0 regular season is, well, history now.

A new year – and the NFL’s second season – beckon.

“You’ve got to forget about 16-0 because each game now is sudden death and 16-0 won’t mean much if they get beat in the playoffs and don’t win the Super Bowl,” pro football’s winningest head coach, Don Shula, said during an interview from Miami that aired on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown.”

“So all of their concentration now has got to be getting through the playoffs, getting into the Super Bowl and winning the Super Bowl. That’s what’s going to make it a meaningful season: 19-0.”

A good 1,200 miles to the north, that same message was delivered by Patriots head coach Bill Belichick during a conference call with the New England media that took place only moments before Shula spoke late Sunday morning.

Turn the calendar. Turn the page.

“We have a lot of football left to play and the next time we step on the field we’ll be zero-and-zero in the second season,” Belichick said. “So we have a lot to look forward to.”

Looking back, yes, the Patriots put the wraps on a record-setting regular season by overcoming their largest deficit of the year, 12 points (28-16), to defeat the New York Giants, 38-35, at The Meadowlands on Saturday night.

The first 16-0 regular season in NFL history (Shula’s 1972 Dolphins were perfect back in the days when the regular season consisted of 14 games) was accomplished on a night when the Patriots also set a league record for points in a season (589, eclipsing the 556 the Minnesota Vikings put on the board in 1998).

Individually, Tom Brady set a new mark for touchdown passes in a season (50, surpassing Peyton Manning’s 49 with the Indianapolis Colts in 2004),

Randy Moss erased the old mark for TD receptions in a season (23, exceeding Jerry Rice’s 22 with San Francisco in 1987) and Wes Welker moved past the franchise-record 101 balls Troy Brown caught in 2001 by hauling in 112.

“With the success we’ve had this season,” Belichick said, “(Saturday night’s) game had a little bit more of a degree of satisfaction because it was the culmination of the regular season.”

As is his wont, however, Belichick was quick to add a qualifier.

“At the same time,” he said, “we’ve got things we need to work on. We’ll make those corrections and identify them and try to improve them, just like we do every week. So I don’t see that whole part of it being dramatically different from any other game.”

The Patriots’ players are off until Thursday and won’t play until Jan. 12 at 8 p.m. (following this coming weekend’s bye). They will face the lowest remaining seed in the AFC, but the coaching staff was at work in the film room at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, only hours after the team’s 3:30 a.m. return from East Rutherford, N.J.

“We’re coming off kind of a short night here,” Belichick said. “We got back late. We’re trying to look at the film here and push through some corrections ad grade the film and so forth after the Giants game and then we’ll get on to some of the other things we need to do later on this week.”

In other words, perfect regular season? Yes. Perfect team? No.

“There are things we need to do better,” the coach said.

First and foremost would seem to be a defense that managed to make the Giants’ Eli Manning stand as tall as his big brother for much of Saturday night in compiling a passer rating of 118.6 while completing 22 of 32 passes for 251 yards and four touchdowns with one interception on an overthrow.

There is also the matter of special teams where the Pats surrendered a 74-yard kickoff return for a score by Domenik Hixon.

“There are plenty of things in the game that we can improve on and can do better,” Belichick said. “That’s in all three phases of the game, but certainly defensively. When you give up 35 points on defense and special teams, that’s not where you want to be. That’s not going to win every game for you in this league, that’s for sure.”

And where the loss column is concerned, it’s one-and-done now.

“Of course, we know what the situation is in the playoffs,” Belichick said. “We’ve been there before. Lose and go home, win and keep playing. It’s all one-game seasons now. Everybody is aware of that.

“We’ll have to have a good week of preparation and prepare to play well against our next opponent, whoever that is. But we know that team is one of the best teams in the league. So it will be a huge challenge for us and that is what we will start getting ready for.”